How much does on-site duplicated content affect SERPs?
-
Hi,
We've recently gotten into Moz, with our E-commerce websites, and discovered that it's crawler takes note of about 2500 pages which it thinks are the same (duplicated). We've now begun to completely rewrite every description of every product (including Meta Title/Description) so that this number may be reduced.
Since this is the biggest issue Moz spots I'm wondering what the effect of fixing it will be on our position in the SERP (mainly Google). Does anybody have some stories or experience about this topic?
Thanks in Advance!
Alexander
-
Thanks for your insight!
we're trying to get all of our pages rank A, according to Moz's on-page analyis, optimised for different keywords. -
If the duplicate content was duplicated on other sites, then by rewriting the content and making it unique, you may see your site ranking for keywords you didn't rank for previously. Â Google and Bing try to weed out duplicate content. Â They prefer to just show one result with that content. Â So, typically, they pick one of the pages that has the content, the one they think it the original, and they only include that page in the search results (at least in the first few pages). Â So, if you're site was being kept out of the search results because Google didn't pick your site to display, you may now start to rank for those keywords.
As to how dramatic a change it will be for you, it depends on how competitive the keywords are, how well you optimize the pages, and how authoritative your website is.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Yeah! We're re-doing all content! including categories, which we want to rank for their specific keywords of course
-
Depends on how fast your pages get crawled again, which depends on your niche and your domain trust as well.
Ive gotten badly optimised ecom sites to rank by just making great onpage seo changes. In a highly competitive space, you will see less "drastic" jumps but you'll still be able to see it. Be sure to add great unique content on your category pages ok?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
In Wordpress getting marked as duplicate content for tags
Moz is marking 11 high priority items for duplicate content. Just switched to wordpress and publishing articles for the site but only have a few. The problem is on the tag pages. Since there aren't very many articles so when you go to the tag pages it lists one or two articles and hence there are pages with duplicate content. Most of the articles have the same tags / categories. Perhaps I'm using too many tags and categories? I'm using about 7 tags and around 2 categories for each post / event. I've read the solution is using canonical tags but a little confused on which page I should use for the tag and then I believe I need to point the duplicate pages to the correct page. For example, I have two events that are for dances and both have the same tags. So when you visit, site.com/tags/dance or site.com/events both pages have the same articles listed. Which page do I select as having the original content? Does it matter? Does that make sense? Someone was also saying I could use the Yoast plugin to fix, but not really seeing anything in the Yoast tools. I also see 301 redirects mentioned as a solution but the tag pages will be changing as we add new articles and they have a purpose so not really seeing that as a solution.
Web Design | | limited70 -
Should Our Mobile Responsive Version of our Ecommerce Site include the on Page content to Help with Rankings
Hello All, We are soon to launch our new redesigned website along with a mobile responsive version but i  have noticed we currently don't include the on page Content we have on the mobile version which we have on the desktop version to help with rankings etc. I am not sure how google does mobile research with regards to rankings. We have designed our responsive version to be as user friendly as possible at the expense of having to much clutter/content but I am wondering now , if we will rank on mobile if all our on page content isn't present. Just wondered if we should include it at the bottom of the pages with say a "Read more"  extension to help avoid clutter? Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
I want to make changes, in my site's visual appearence
As we are getting more user to our site. We decided to improve its visual appearance. As of now our site ranked higher around 1 - 5 in google. Does the visual changes affect SEO rank and what about adding subdomains?
Web Design | | FhyzicsBCPL0 -
How to handle International Duplicated Content?
Hi, We have multiple international E-Commerce websites. Usually our content is translated and doesn't interfere with each other, but how do search engines react to duplicate content on different TLDs? We have copied our Dutch (NL) store for Belgium (BE) and i'm wondering if we could be inflicting damage onto ourselves... Should I use: for every page? are there other options so we can be sure that our websites aren't conflicting? Are they conflicting at all? Alex
Web Design | | WebmasterAlex0 -
Does Using Magento With Multi Sites Affect SEO
We have a client who has 3 separate websites targeting the US, Australia, and the UK. Each of them has relevant ccTLD's such as: .com .com.au and .co.uk. Our client wants to use the Magento multi-site function so it combines all the stores (which are the exact same products) and merge it into one through Magento. These sites are all hosted in the US and had nothing to do with me haha! I understand Rand has mentioned on a video it would be best having the websites with ccTLD's hosted in that country (if budget permits), however in this case the budget doesn't permit us to go down that road. Has anyone any advice on this matter, has anyone did this before and had a lot of success with the SEO? At present there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it and opinions are varied and sometimes divided. Any help would be very much appreciated guys Thanks, Matt
Web Design | | HigherthanSEO0 -
My Site Is Using A Lot of Hosting Bandwidth. Suggestions?
My website http://www.socialseomanagement.com/ is using tons of bandwidth. Â I received a message from the hosting company saying I exceeded my monthly bandwidth and it has only been a few days. Â Can anyone take a look and make suggestions? Thanks
Web Design | | JChronicle0 -
Is it common to have some of error/warning(currency duplicate,redirect, etc...) in most website that rank well?
Hi could any body could give me some idea on 'on page optimisation' Currently in my campaign I have around 3000+ errors, 14,000+ warning, 7000+ notices for the following reasons: Overly-Dynamic URL
Web Design | | LauraHT
Temporary Redirect
Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)
Duplicate Page Title
etc... First of all I know these have negative effect on SEO. Now to fix towards those issues it involve lots of works and times. At the same time most of our important keywords/url rank position have not changed over the last 12 months. Does that mean the above has only limited negative effect? I just want to know is it worthy to invest the man/hour/money to clean those issues. As it involves decent development time. Is it common to have some of error/warning in most website that rank well? (e.g. I 've seem may big website have duplicate title/meta-desc on their currency variant page)0 -
Effect of Off-Site Images
I'm getting to start work with a new client, and I've run across something I've never had to deal with before, off-site images. The site I'll be working on is for an appliance retailer, both online and physical. The way they've had their site built (not something I was part of) a third party company maintains the product inventory side of things. They're sourcing from about 35 different manufacturers, and this third party has direct access to the product information streams. They push the weekly updated information to my clients site. What this means, though, is that the product images don't live on the client's site. They're hotlinked from the third party's inventory doohickey. I've never seen something quite like this before. Has anyone else? Any ideas as to what problems I may face when it comes to on-site SEO?
Web Design | | MRCSearch0